Liberals pitted against W.H. on trade

The White House’s free trade negotiations with South Korea, Colombia and Panama are about to look like a piece of cake, compared to the work ahead to get House Democrats to agree on the details.

Already Republicans are on board, another show of President Barack Obama’s ability to work with the GOP while irking his party’s liberal base.

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After the White House on Monday announced that it had reached agreement with Panama, House Ways and Means Committee chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) said that he was prepared to move quickly on all three deals. “U.S. job creators and workers are every day put at a disadvantage to foreign competitors from countries that have already concluded trade agreements without us. The more we delay, the more we lose. The time to act is now.”

But Camps’ Democratic counterparts aren’t so warm to his haste. As in past trade votes, members of the more-liberal wing of the Democratic Party appear ready to side with organized-labor and human rights advocates, groups Obama will no doubt look to for support in 2012. It’s an awkward position for Obama as the trade debate unfolds toward a bipartisan agreement expected this summer.

“There is a reason the agreements didn’t move forward with the previous administration,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said of the then-Democratic-controlled House, at a Wednesday press breakfast hosted by the centrist group Third Way. “We did bring people back to the table and addressed some of the concerns of labor.” Trade observers in both parties have said that new White House chief of staff Bill Daley—who has had strong connections to the business community—has pushed for quicker action.

Although Kirk conceded the GOP’s persistence in pushing the three agreements since taking House control, he added that they didn’t affect the White House’s broader strategy—either on substance or timing. “Republicans came in and said send [the agreements] out. We said no,” until additional changes were made.

Still, much of organized labor and its closest Hill allies remain staunchly opposed—a source of discomfort for Obama as he prepares for reelection. With unemployment close to nine percent, many Democrats believe that reduced trade barriers are a bad message to beleaguered workers.

For Democratic critics, the Colombia deal has raised the strongest opposition because of continuing concern over physical attacks and threats to union leaders. “I am appalled that the administration is putting forward this action plan as the answer to Colombia’s rampant human rights and labor rights violations,” said Rep. Mike Michaud (D-Maine), who chairs the House Trade Working Group.

A larger group of liberal Democrats—including close Pelosi allies George Miller (D-Calif.), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)—last month demanded assurances from Obama that “Colombia’s long track record of repression, violence and murder of labor unionists has truly changed.” Obama subsequently hosted Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos at a cordial White House meeting to promote the trade agreement.

Even stronger criticism of all three trade deals has come from Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, which has support on these issues from large labor unions. At a Ways and Means Committee hearing, the group’s leaders called for more sweeping clean-up of Panama’s bank secrecy practices and tax-haven practices, and cast doubt on Administration claims that the South Korean deal would yield 70,000 U.S. jobs.